President Donald Trump drew criticism on Wednesday after saying he had a good relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, prompting backlash over his latest comments.

Trump, who had called for U.S. military exercises with South Korea to be cut, said during an Oval Office press conference that continuing the drills would be unfair to North Korea’s supreme leader.

The comments follow a first-term record of direct diplomacy with Pyongyang: Trump met Kim face to face three times — in Singapore in June 2018, in Hanoi in February 2019 at talks that ended without an agreement, and at the Demilitarized Zone in June 2019, where he became the first sitting U.S. president to set foot in North Korea. After the Singapore summit, he suspended large-scale joint exercises, calling the "war games" expensive and provocative.

"I do have a good relationship with Kim Jong Un," Trump said. "I didn't like the fact that we're doing these massive military exercises really against North Korea when I'm friendly with him."

The drills have long been a flashpoint between Washington and Pyongyang. North Korea routinely condemns the joint exercises as rehearsals for invasion, while the United States and South Korea describe them as defensive. The alliance is anchored by the 1953 Mutual Defense Treaty, signed after the Korean War ended in an armistice rather than a formal peace treaty, and by a long-standing U.S. troop presence on the peninsula.

Social media commentators reacted sharply to the remarks.

"Maybe next time we shouldn’t elect someone President who kisses the a---- of Putin and Kim," David Yoffee, a frequent political commentator who self-describes as a Democrat, wrote on X.

"@RepDonBacon still waiting for you to pull your 29 years of honorable service out of the trash and do something that should not have to seem so brave. Please wake up, D̴r̴.̴ ̴J̴o̴n̴e̴s̴ Rep. Bacon," attorney John Oleske wrote on X, calling on the veteran and GOP lawmaker, a retired Air Force brigadier general from Nebraska, to respond.

"Trump: Maybe Kim does a little 'military operation' and takes over South Korea in a Putin-ish manner. Maybe I look the other way unless $10 billion appears in my lap. Who knows," liberal political commentator Chris Robinson wrote on X.

"Worst reboot ever of the movie ‘The Interview’ with Seth Rogen and James Franco," journalist Nancy Levine Stearns wrote on X. The film, a 2014 Sony Pictures comedy centered on a fictional assassination plot against Kim Jong Un, was preceded by a hacking attack on Sony that U.S. officials attributed to North Korea.

Worst reboot ever of the movie ‘The Interview’ with Seth Rogen and James Franco. — Nancy Levine Stearns (@nancylevine) August 19, 2026